The Wife(tm) and I woke up before dawn, and headed in to the hunting area. Set up in two separate spots that seemed likely for some deer activity. And waited… and waited… and waited… I had finally had all the waiting I can stand, so I got up and started hiking. We had a fresh skiff of snow on the ground, so I was hunting for tracks. As is typical in the Coeur d’Alene area, where hunters wolves and coyotes outnumber the deer 20 to 1, I hiked for a couple of hours without seeing a single deer track (though if I had a shotgun that fired coyote tracks, and walked down the trails shooting the ground every few feet – it would look just about like what I saw). But, I am stubborn and determined, and so I hiked until I finally caught some deer tracks crossing the trail I was on. I turned and followed them through some nasty brush, and eventually wound up back in a kind of rough/brushy clearing that had a nice draw running down through the middle of it. There were three well defined trails along the bottom of the draw, with deer tracks on all three both coming and going (and at least 4 different deer tracks – fawn, doe, small buck, and bigger buck). The far side of the clearing was a posted fence line, but the clearing was sure enough public/huntable. Snow quit less than 24 hours ago, so they were fairly fresh, and so I marked that spot on the GPS and kept hiking. I hiked for probably 3 hours – didn’t bounce a single deer (typical here). By this time, my legs/feet from the knees down were soaked to the boan and I was loosin feeling in my toes, so I rounded back to the truck to pick up The Wife(tm) and head back home to warm up.
Later that afternoon The Wife(tm) and I headed back into the same area. I plunked down in my lawn-chair with my back to a bush in the spot I’d marked on the GPS, and The Wife(tm) sat up on a high point about half a mile away where she could see a good 400 yards in any direction. I took about 15 or 20 minutes to break off dead branches and rip up some weeds, and othewise clear some shooting lanes from my position. Then I settled in for a wait. 4 hours till dark – which is a bit long for me, I usually get stir crazy about 3 hours in if I haven’t seen anything (and not seeing anything is the norm for local hunting). But, I had fresh tracks, and by golly, I wasn’t going to pass this up.
About 3 hours later, I’m in the midst of the usual “this is a waste of time, I’m in a bad spot, I should go hunt farther up the trail, this is frustrating, etc…”…. when I hear a squirrel go into it’s “get the hell away from here” song. Hrmmm…. could it be? Na… 5 minutes go by… 10… I am swinging my head ever so slowly back and forth, because I can see almost 360 degrees in any direction from my position, so I’m trying to watch as much as possible. I’m just coming back around over my left shoulder when my heart stops. Deer. Buck. 50 ish yards. In the one spot I didn’t clear out the low hanging branches. Heading off the trail into some thick stuff.
Not sure if I was ever going to get another shot, in less time than it takes to type this, I brought yee olde 30-06 to my shoulder, guesstimated the low hanging branches between us were close enough to the deer to not matter much, and sent a 180 grain Nosler BT on it’s way. BANG. Flop. Ohhhh.. yeahh…. first buck since I left BC, down and out! Not the biggest deer I ever shot (actually one of the bottom 3), and probably the small buck of the two sets of tacks I saw, but he was working on being a little 4×3, and I didn’t really care anyway – I hunt for food and if the antlers are big, I like that, but I don’t really care when it’s hammer time – legal animal = dead ainmal.
The Wife(tm) still had an hour or so to hunt, so I just sat back in my chair and said a prayer of thanks, and relaxed till dark. She didn’t get nothing, but by that point, we didn’t care so much – too much happiness we had a buck down to worry about it. Then, I went and got the truck, picked up the wife, and then the real work started.
Post mortem on the deer – I’m 99% sure the bullet hit a branch on the way in and impacted either full sideways or at least a good bit off-kilter. Strangest looking entry wound I’ve seen – oblong and large. Also, my aim is pretty good at 50 ish yards, and I was aiming about 3 inches forward and about 4 inches lower than where it hit. But, whatever, it bang-flop’ed ‘im, so I’m a happy dude.
Oh, and it’s first blood for my custom built Interarms Mauser I snagged off a really good friend of mine, which made me happy too.